Healing isn’t linear. And from what I’ve learnt so far, it doesn’t get easier. It just hurts differently, in a different place, you heal one wound and find a new one. Sometimes wishing you found the one you currently tend to before the previous one you healed. But that’s not the nature of healing, you don’t get to pick. Whatever it is, happens in the time it is supposed to.
There’s no rushing it. Just taking the steps so the wound, or maybe you, can grow strong again. Strong in a new way. Strong with a kind of beauty that comes from the work of healing.
It reminds me of Kintsugi – the gold-filled cracks, the filling what was once broken with gold in the cracks, beauty of imperfection, repair of what was once broken, embracing the flaws as part of the story. Part of your make up. My make up. Parts of us all. Carefully pieced back together.
I really like this idea of gold cracks because we don’t just break once and along the way there’s many different pieces to put back together to be whole again. The gold that connects them all, the pain, the purpose, the healing and the beauty. How they’re all tied together, the gold is what makes us whole again.
So what’s your gold?
I’ve found a lot of mine on life’s journey, and to revisit a point a made earlier probably not in the order I would’ve wanted. But maybe that’s all part of it, trusting the process, trusting the timing, trusting that your gold will show up along the way.
It’s strange, really. In some ways we all have the desire to be ‘fixed’, whatever that means to each of us, but so often shy away from being broken. But you can’t have one without the other, they need each other to exist. To be fixed is to be broken and the resilience that requires is quite daunting because to keep fixing eventually comes with an awareness you’ll likely break again, and that’s okay.
You become aware of what pokes at you, what still hurts even though healed, what’s scarred and what’s stronger. What you’re okay with being or feeling broken forever, despite trying. Constantly learning, because even this could look different on different days.
What doesn’t change is the importance of trusting that healing process, believing in it. As hard as it probably will be but knowing it is leading you somewhere better, even when it feels messy.
Finding your gold.